Editorial Comment ///

Paul N. “Red” Adair has died of natural causes at the age of 89. His 50-year career in controlling well blowouts began at a time when the technology was not very far advanced. He turned doubters into converts with each new invention and technique, squelching more than 2,000 blowouts. Some of the most noteworthy included killing the Bravo offshore blowout in 1977 and the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988, both in the North Sea, the latter of which killed 167 men, and the long-lived Ixtoc-1 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979. He is especially remembered for putting out 119 of the 700 fires in Kuwaiti oil fields after the first Gulf War.

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